Monthly Archives: March 2019

What’s in Your Fast Food?

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This is for everyone that still eats at McDonald’s (Even if they won’t admit it!)

Feeling hungry? You may want to read the rest of this article before you head to your favorite fast food restaurant and order your usual chemical and prescription drug-ridden meal. Did you know you’re likely eating crushed beetles and or duck feathers with your fast food burger? Here are some of the most disgusting additives you’re eating when you hit the drive-thru:

1.) Ammonium Sulfate

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Nothing helps mass-produce bread like ammonium sulfate. Unfortunately, nothing fertilizers soil or kills bugs like it either. Read more about ammonium sulfate and other nasty bread additives here: 5 Dangerous Additives Hidden In Packaged Bread

 2.) Silicone Oil

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Chicken McNuggets are full of dimethylpolysiloxane, a silicone oil that is often used for making contact lenses and other medical items. Learn more about your beloved McNuggets here: The Chicken That Should Be Banned

 3.) Cysteine-L

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Fast food restaurants use Cysteine-L, an amino acid synthesized from human hair or duck feathers, to flavor their meat and soften their breads and pastries.

4.) TBHQ

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This additive can be found in 18 McDonald’s menu items. It’s potentially lethal, but don’t worry, the FDA says it’s generally regarded as safe (GRAS). Learn more about TBHQ here: The Petroleum Byproduct You Are Most Likely Eating

5.) Propylene Glycol

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Propylene glycol is a chemical compound that can be found in anti-freeze, e-cigarettes, and that’s right! Fast food!

6.) Prescription Drugs

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By testing feathers, researchers from Johns Hopkins University found some very interesting characteristics of factory-farm-raised poultry. And you thought the pink slime scandal was bad? Anti-depressants as well as other prescription drugs are added to chicken feed for fast food “poultry” items. That’s right, those McChicken sandwiches and McNuggets come from chickens that were raised on a steady diet of prescription, over-the-counter, and even banned drugs. Learn more about it here: 3 Dirty Chicken Facts Exposed

7.) Dimethylpolysiloxane

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You’ll find this in almost any fried fast food menu item and also in silly putty, contact lenses, caulking, shampoo and conditioners, cosmetics, polishes, heat resistant tiles, and the list goes on… Learn more about Dimethylpolysiloxane by following this link.

8.) Carminic Acid

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Synthesized by Cochineal beetles, Carminic acid is used to dye foods, especially meats, red. You can learn more about the beetles in your food HERE.

9.) Cellulose

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You’ll find this organic compound, which is produced from wood pulp, in nearly every fast food menu item. Learn more about cellulose by following this link.

10.) Silicon Dioxide

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This industrial sand is used in things like Wendy’s chili to keep it from clumping together. Mmm… industrial sand. Learn more about silicon dioxide HERE.

Cooking your own food has never sounded more appealing. If you think you can’t afford it, follow this link to learn how to grow your own organic produce. What’s that all you have is an apartment? Check out these tips for apartment gardening!

from:    https://realfarmacy.com/youll-never-eat-mcdonalds-read-horrifying-facts/

The Opportunity of Crisis

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Is Your Life Crisis Really a Spiritual Calling in Disguise?

February 28th, 2019

By Mateo Sol

Guest Writer for Wake Up World

So many are alive who don’t seem to care. Casual, easy, they move in the world as though untouched. But you take pleasure in the faces of those who know they thirst. You cherish those who grip you for survival. You are not dead yet, it’s not too late to open your depths by plunging into them and drink in the life that reveals itself quietly there. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke (Rilke’s Book of Hours)

In our journey towards “civilization” we’ve found more and more ways to numb and disconnect ourselves from Spirit. We live and work in gated communities, shopping centers, and office buildings, with air conditioned houses and cars, fences, landscapers, animal controllers, and we spend our leisure time immersed in complex and absorbing technological worlds.

In order to deal with our soul starvation, we drown ourselves in prescription medications, alcohol, recreational drugs, consumerism and other soul-numbing forms of escapism. We even suffocate ourselves in rigid belief systems that moralize and judge others, promising to alleviate our sense of alienation from life and existential turmoil.

But our souls are wiser than all of this. There comes a moment in our lives where we grow out of the collective values and ways of living common to our societies. At a certain point in our lives, we realize that the values, attitudes, relationships and beliefs we’ve held no longer contribute to the development of who we truly are: our authentic selves.

This life crisis, although painful, provides a vital opportunity for us to begin our spiritual journeys towards wholeness.

Quarter-Life, Middle-Life and Deathbed Crisis

In our Western soul-suppressing societies, many of us experience our “true callings” towards the spiritual journey throughout life, but most of us never truly “hear” or answer to them.

This spiritual calling presents itself in many ways throughout our lives such as the death of loved ones, suicidal depressions, illnesses, near-death experiences, divorce, and so forth. But there are three main milestones that call to us the most loudly.

The first calling is what we modernly refer to as the “quarter-life crisis.” The quarter-life crisis happens in the first quarter of life: generally after we finish high school or university. At this time in our lives, we intuitively know that we need to “find” ourselves by leaving behind our family, friends and hometowns. These people and places formed our juvenile identities as children and teenagers.

When I answered this calling, I remembered feeling intense fear and uncertainty. Saying goodbye to everyone and everything you love is a very hard task.

The second great calling presents itself as a “midlife crisis.” This crisis may come in the form of an affair, a divorce, severe job unhappiness, an empty nest, lifeless relationships, endless life dissatisfaction, or disappointment with the way life has gone. Ultimately, in my opinion, the midlife crisis comes at a moment where you’ve gathered enough wisdom to know that you’re not going to live forever.

Most people who experience midlife crises have spent their entire lives raising a family, or working in a career. They haven’t had the time, or capacity, to ask the important questions in life. Eventually, something triggers the question, “Is this all there is?”

The third and final calling often comes as a deathbed crisis if we didn’t answer the previous two callings. The inevitability of an imminent death creates such immense turmoil and ego distress, that the light of consciousness is finally permitted to shine through us. Many hospice workers have confirmed this with me.

Although it’s better late than never, what a shame that so many people wait until their last moments to taste truth, deep insight and peace. Some never even experience it.

We all have to accept our imminent death someday in order to live life more fully. The sooner we come to terms with this, the better. But even if we receive this calling late in life, we are still blessed to receive it.

Surrendering to the Hurricane

Listening to your calling and accepting your spiritual awakening comes like a great hurricane.

Suddenly everything you’ve ever known is ripped away from you and lost in the tempest. The more you struggle, the more you get thrown around mercilessly. But the moment you surrender, you stand in the eye of the hurricane peacefully allowing everything that doesn’t serve you to be swept away.

Surrendering is extremely important in two ways. Firstly, it allows you to let go of your former limiting self, e.g. all of your beliefs, ambitions, roles, and perceptions of how you were suppose to be. And secondly surrendering allows you to embody your Soul, that is, all of your deepest longings, dreams and wildest passions.

It’s natural to experience fear and resistance in the face of the hurricane. You’ll need to deeply explore what parts of you are creating resistance. There are several ways to do this but the simplest way (in my opinion) is to write down how the fear feels in your body. What images and memories arise during your process of surrendering? Writing down what happened when you were “called” to the spiritual journey is also a great exercize, for example: where you were when it happened, what catalyzed it, how your body felt, what emotions arose within you, and other significant life events connected to it.

As you walk into the heart of your life crisis, you will need to confide in others who are going through similar experiences. This can bring a great sense of emotional alleviation and kinship, and you can find many online and local groups dedicated to inner awakenings. (For example, you’ll find a lot of kindred spirits on this website!)

Be prepared to experience immense loneliness as well. After all, surrendering your former worldview essentially separates you from your habitual way of life, including your old anchors, comforts and even friends or family members. Here are some ways to handle this temporary loneliness.

Unfortunately some people that go through life crises handle their previous responsibilities and commitments in unhealthy ways. You don’t necessarily need to quit your job, get divorced, sell your house, abandon your children, and leave your friends to embark on the spiritual path. Instead, starting your journey means becoming more in-tune with your soul, and exploring what is no longer supporting your growth and self-exploration.

I like to think of this period in life as “spiritual simplification.” In other words, what roles, relationships, activities, and possessions are in the way of Spirit flowing through you?

4 Signs You’ve Had a Spiritual Calling

So how do we know if we’re experiencing a deep calling towards spiritual awakening, or just a momentary mood swing or desire to escape from our life responsibilities?

Mythologist Joseph Campbell notes four qualities that accompany the spiritual calling. I’ve found them to be quite accurate and useful:

1) It’s not an avoidance of responsibility. Rather than providing you an opportunity to escape from your problems or burdens, a spiritual calling feels almost ominous. We all have problems we’d rather not face in our daily lives, but if you’re experiencing a spiritual calling, you’ll somehow sense that a difficult and overwhelming journey lies ahead of you. Despite this, there is a profound desire to embark on it.

2) It’s familiar yet frightening. Many describe the sensation as déjà vu or familiarity when listening to the voice of their souls.

3) You feel as though you’ve reached the end of your current journey. Whether you want to realize it or not, you feel as though your current path has reached a dead end. What once made you happy and excited now feels empty.

4) You weren’t looking for your true calling, it found you. Your calling was unexpected and unwanted. But now you face the fork in the road that demands your decision.

Other signs include feeling intensely powerful emotions and even altered states or mystical experiences during spiritual awakenings.

Ask yourself, what would happen if you ignored this calling? What emotions arise within you at the thought, and what do they reveal? You might also like to listen to whatever you feel drawn towards, pursue it, and pay attention to whether it feels intuitively right, or has undertones of fear beneath. When it’s a spiritual awakening, a true calling, you’ll feel closer to home with every step.

from:    https://wakeup-world.com/2019/02/28/is-your-life-crisis-really-a-spiritual-calling-in-disguise/

It’s Up To You

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THE NEGLECTED POWER OF FREEDOM OF CHOICE

Zen Gardner, Contributor
Waking Times

The degree of freedom to consciously make our own decisions in life is something we’re continually waking up to. It’s similar to living in the now. We keep trying, knowing it’s right, and making fresh runs at it daily to live in the moment more and more fully, either by conscious decisions or spontaneously.

What impresses me is how easy it is to fall into unsatisfactory routines. Be they habitual behaviors or living within self circumscribed limits, whatever the reasons or excuses may be. Physical life lends itself to routine for comfort and convenience. This includes survival issues which can appear quite daunting, and even insurmountable, leading to our environment being dictated by base needs and desires.

It gets more complicated when we consider personal relationships which we can often become trapped in. These go hand in hand with whatever environment we find ourselves – our location, finances and true quality of life being the basic guidelines for most. Now add life purpose to this and let’s consider how free we are able to find that true fulfillment our hearts crave. They don’t always work together without seriously draining compromises.

Freedom has to be fought for.

Are we Prisoners of Our Own Making?

The point is we can change these conditions and much more anytime we want. It’s remarkable just how free we are. We “blame” external limitations such as the system, upbringing, mates, family, friends and finances, but these conditions rarely lead us to what we truly desire and are for our highest good. The question looms, are we truly confined by these? Do we only do those things that are prescribed by previous conditions we find ourselves in, either by choice or by simply continually defaulting to external pressures and circumstances?

It’s worth re-evaluating these questions continually, as I see it. When we honestly get down to analyzing the various areas of our personal progress, how would we score ourselves? What needs changing or challenging that we’re either too lazy to do anything about, or too afraid to rock the boat and lose our seeming support system or the comfort of our routine, whether financially, socially, psychologically, spiritually, etc? What’s holding us back from making the changes we know we need?

More importantly, why are we so often afraid to go into the unknown? What prevents us from stepping out to find our truest expression?Change – Ready or Not, Here It Come

The entire game board of life is being shaken from the cosmic down to the very social structure of our planet, and it’s wonderful! Only truth will endure. This isn’t good news to those holding tightly to what they currently have or how they want things to be, whether born from a culturally reinforced fear based mentality, belief system, deep self issues or not. It’s time to wake up and shake off the programming and follow our guts, our hearts. It’s way easier to do it voluntarily by our own volition and heart born desire than to be forced into changes.

A time of personal challenge is now hitting us all. It’s starting with a self clean-up opportunity to prepare us for much greater changes to come. If anyone is going through this you are not alone. However, many will miss the significance of what’s going on right now energetically and will pass along with increased cognitive dissonance and stubborn resistance to change. That’s their choice, but unfortunately in most cases it will affect the rest of us. This is something to be very aware of as the external confusion will only grow. It’s just the nature of things right now. Similar to natural “disasters”, anyone’s life can be turned upside down at a moment’s notice. When we live a more conscious life this realization is ever before us. The key is to not be at the wrong place at the wrong time, in every sense.

The active ingredient within us is our free will, the power of choice, no matter the circumstances or conditions.

As Don Juan aptly said:

“Before you embark on any path ask the question: Does this path have a heart? If the answer is no, you will know it, then you must choose another path. The trouble is nobody asks the question; and when a man finally realizes that he has taken a path without a heart, the path is ready to kill him. At that point very few men can stop to deliberate, and leave the path. A path without a heart is never enjoyable. You have to work hard even to take it. On the other hand, a path with heart is easy; it does not make you work at liking it.”

This is a brief life on this planet. One day our lives will end. It’s time to be alive, not dead in some rut – aptly called a grave with the ends kicked out.

We are fully free to move about the planet, and the Universe. As we always have been.

Let’s exercise our freedom and not let it go to waste. The energy and fulfillment to be released are unfathomable!

Love, Zen

PS. The above was inspired by a lucid dream where I found myself listening to someone demonstrating and going on about something I had no interest in, yet felt trapped in some small gathering of onlookers. As I went through the lucid dream transition to waking up, I found myself wondering why had I just subjected myself to this experience? The resultant thoughts and realizations extrapolating that dynamic quickly ensued, leading to honestly making my own life list evaluating my current situation. A true eye opener from the heart level and great exercise for me. This is simply sharing my experience and personal insights, for what it’s worth to others.

About the Author

Zen Gardner is an impactful and controversial author and speaker with a piercing philosophical viewpoint. His writings have been circulated to millions and his personal story has caused no small stir amongst entrenched alternative pundits. His book “You Are The Awakening” has met rave reviews and is available on Amazon.com.

from:    https://www.wakingtimes.com/2019/03/01/the-neglected-power-of-freedom-of-choice/

Some Bits of Advice

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8 Pieces of “Bad” Life Advice That Are Actually Good

“Your goodness must have some edge to it—else it is none.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

1.) Put less energy into fixing breaks and more energy into breaking fixes

“There is no riskier risk than refusing to risk at all.” ~Jen Sincero

This one’s tricky. I’m not saying don’t heal. I’m not saying don’t lick your wounds. I’m saying make it priority two or three, not one. Otherwise, you’ll end up losing yourself in a tiny comfort zone.

The only way your comfort zone gets bigger is by taking risks. Breaking your fixes is calculated risk taking. Whether your fix is an addiction, an outdated belief, a cultural conditioning, or a political/religious indoctrination, when you focus more on breaking fixes, you are being proactive about getting the horse of your life in front of the cart of your unreasonable (and often unfounded) expectations.

Look at it like a cycle of health and self-improvement. Break your fix, let the risky adventure break you (hero’s journey), fix your breaks, then get back to breaking your fixes. In order to achieve wise and holistic interdependence (cosmic heroism) you’ll need courageous and risky independence (personal heroism) to break yourself away from the comfortable but stagnant codependence (fear).

2.) Embarrass yourself as quickly as possible

“Passion is the result of action, not the cause of it.” ~Mark Manson

Before you can get better at something you have to suck at it first. Forget about talent. Forget about luck. Talent and luck pale in comparison to perseverance. Sure, they might help you get better faster, but they are out of your hands. So it’s better not to even waste your energy on them in the first place. Focus on what you can control, and that’s self-improvement.

Self-improvement takes practice. And practice means action. It might even mean looking like a fool. So be it. Embarrass yourself. Make mistakes as soon as you can. Free yourself to write, paint, produce, sculpt or play the worst thing ever created. Don’t fear failure. Embrace it. Own it. Learn from it. Then recreate from the vital knowledge gleaned from your plethora of mistakes.

If you avoid failure, embarrassment and fear, then you will never create anything meaningful. So go all in. Fail fast. Embarrass yourself as quickly as possible. Make glorious mistakes. Samuel Beckett said it best: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.”

3.) Use philosophy as a chisel for the hardened beliefs within you

“Philosophical thinking that doesn’t do violence to one’s settled mind is no philosophical thinking at all.” ~Rebecca Goldstein

Philosophy helps you discover that everything is connected despite what you’ve been taught.

Questioning what you think you know diminishes the broadcast of the codependent ego so that you can tune into the broadcast of the interdependent whole.

If wisdom is what you’re seeking, then the interdependent whole is a good place to start. If your goal is to get out of the rat race, to transcend the stagnant status quo and to overcome the default setting, then questioning what you’ve been taught is a good first step.

Rather than importing wholesale whatever framework for life the codependent status quo programmed and conditioned you to accept, use philosophy (the art of questioning all things) to discover how everything is connected to everything else.

Using philosophy as a chisel is self-actualizing. It deconstructs meaning. It interrogates worldviews. It is proactively self-improving.

It teaches you how to be relentless in your questioning, how to be ruthless in your circumspection, and how to self-overcome so as not to be overwhelmed by the tribe. More importantly, it will help you discover your most authentic self by providing a flexible yet fierce way of being and becoming human in the world.

4.) You’ll reap no evolution if you don’t sow a little revolution

“The revolution begins at home. If you overthrow yourself again and again, you might earn the right to help overthrow the rest of us.” ~Rob Brezsny

Humans may not agree on much. But one thing most of us can agree on is that we all hope for a healthy and progressive evolution for our species.

The problem is that most of us live in profoundly sick societies. Societies that pollute the air they need to breathe, the water they need to drink, the food they need to eat, and the minds they need to co-evolve with.

Any system that forces its people to breathe polluted air, drink polluted water, eat polluted food and then reinforces its people (whether through brainwashing, political propaganda, or cultural conditioning) to continue doing all the things that causes that pollution is a profoundly sick society. As Krishnamurti wisely put it, “It’s no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

So what can you do about it? For starters, educate yourself. Honor the golden rule, the nonaggression principle, and the 7th generation principle. In the face of a profoundly sick society this might mean sowing a little revolution.

Next, if you’re really feeling courageous, dare yourself to become David against the Goliath of the state. Become Heracles against the Hydra of the war machine. Become a well-armed lamb contesting all votes. Become lionhearted despite all cowards.

But before any of that, you must check yourself. You must become free. Becoming free is the most revolutionary act you can take. You must be free in order to gain the courage necessary to create the kind of change that leads to a healthy and progressive evolution for our species.

5.) Your “love and light” could use a little tough love and darkness

“These mountains that you’re carrying, you were only supposed to climb.”~Najwa Zebian

Happiness is overrated. “Good vibes only” is just plain lazy. Get out from underneath the burden of needing to be happy all the time. That’s too much weight to be carrying around. Take it easy on yourself.

Forcing yourself to be positive and happy all the time is just an ego trap set up by the scared-shitless part of you that doesn’t want to face the shitty parts of life. That’s blatant repression.

Stop demonizing sadness. You cannot be happy all the time. Happiness, like sadness, is a passing storm across the sky of the Self. Some storms are refreshing and invigorating, like happiness. Some are painful and rough, like sadness. Both can be overwhelming. But both are merely information. They just happen to be information that you “feel.”

As far as information goes, pain and sadness will teach you more than comfort and happiness ever could. Use that information to make yourself healthier. Use it to create meaning. Happiness will become a convenient bi-product of your self-improvement. The best you can do is hope for the best and be prepared for the worst. And nothing prepares you for the worst better than the vital information gleaned from pain and sadness.

6.) Don’t allow your life to become overly domesticated:

“Society tames the wolf into a dog. And man is the most domesticated animal of them all.” ~Nietzsche

Get away from the zoo-mentality, the menagerie of madness. Let your mind out of its steel cage. Crucify any routine that kills your dreams. Nail it to a cross and fill your winecup with its blood. Play more. Dare more. Adventure more. Trust more. Love more. Domesticate less!

Problems arise from excess. Excessive culture. Excessive domestication. Excessive control. Excessive tidiness. Excessive pacification. When anything becomes excessive it smothers wildness. It smothers freedom. It smothers the soul.

Learn to be nourished by solitude rather than defeated by it. The wild is the greatest teacher in the world. Meditation in solitude is a sacred strategy that helps bring balance between nature and the human soul. Let the interconnected cosmos teach you the difference between healthy and unhealthy through a “language older than words (Derrick Jensen).”

So get out there. Get off your overly-domesticated ass. There’s nothing stopping you, but you. There’s an entire world to explore. There are wild places calling out to your heart. It’s a call to adventure. It’s a hero’s journey.

Life is too short not to feel your deepest darkest wildness howling inside you. I implore you: don’t just become another domesticated dog. Discover the wolf hidden inside you.

As Nietzsche profoundly stated, “Truth as Circe. Error has turned animals into men; might truth be capable of turning man into an animal again?”

7.) Kill your old self and bury the body in the back yard

“Unless you are constantly practicing it, this dying and being reborn, you are only a guest on this dark planet earth.” ~Goethe

The art of healthy ego-annihilation: question thyself, destroy thyself, rebirth thyself.

Why is all this killing and rebirthing necessary for self-improvement (or spiritual development)? You kill your codependent self so that your independent self can emerge with the courage to become an interdependent force of nature. In other words: your ability to adapt and overcome is directly proportional to your ability to self-overcome.

Sometimes the only way to discover that the “door to your jailcell has always been open” is to lose the mindset that conditioned you into thinking that you were trapped. The trapped mindset is also the fear-based mindset. It’s the indoctrinated mindset. In short: it’s your codependent self. Kill it, as soon as possible. Learn from it. Then “bury” it in your muscle memory (back yard).

Learn to do this again and again and it becomes a healthy cycle of self-overcoming that can lead to profound self-improvement and deep enlightenment. With enough practice, this questioning yourself, destroying yourself and rebirthing yourself will come as easily as your body sheds its skin.

8.) Love dangerously

“Healthy, strong individuals seek self-expansion by experimenting and by living dangerously. The good life is ever changing, challenging, devoid of regret, intense, creative and risky.” ~Friedrich Nietzsche

What is loving dangerously?

Loving dangerously is loving without hope. It’s loving courageously, vulnerably, honestly. Which is likely to hurt. Therefore, loving dangerously is being open-hearted enough to be okay with having your heart broken. In fact, it’s about becoming adept at adapting to heart break. It’s about overcoming the slings and arrows of life and becoming resilient, robust, and antifragile because of heartbreak.

On a long enough timeline heartbreak is inevitable anyway. So, you might as well get better at adapting to it, at learning from it, at transforming it into something that can make you stronger. Taking risks, loving dangerously, loving vulnerably with your heart on your sleeve… That’s true courage.

Loving dangerously is loving without an agenda. It’s being a true hopeless romantic rather than just talking out your ass about it (like hopeful or hopefool romantics do). It’s allowing others to love the way they must love. It’s letting go of your ego’s attachment to love. It’s loving at the edge of the human condition: fallible, uncertain, hungry, in a frenzy.

Paraphrasing Samuel Becket: Ever loving. Ever broken hearted. No matter. Love again. Break your heart open again. Break it better… That’s loving dangerously.

Life is short. Love is risky. Courage is uncomfortable. But more of life comes from love laid open and bare than love closed-up and made invulnerable in vain. So, take the leap into the dangerous and vulnerable waters of love. There is adventure to be had. As Rumi suggested, “Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absentminded. Someone sober will worry about things going badly. Let the lover be.”

from:    https://themindunleashed.com/2019/02/8-pieces-of-bad-life-advice-that-are-actually-good.html